Hutchins - Language and Literacy

At the beginning of the semester, watching the Resnick TedTalk was inspiring. It was easy to see the benefit of “computational thinking” and having one of the creators of arguably the most popular intro-to-programming software supporting the integration of computational thinking across learning disciplines motivated me to learn more about what this integration may look like and how I could use the tools needed to promote computational thinking – even in a computer science classroom.

To be honest, prior to opening the Brennan & Resnick article I was a little hesitant – perhaps my pessimism settled in. When I read, I first do a glance over at the overall structure of an article including major sections, topics that will be addressed, etc. The abundance of Scratch photos made me approach the article as an advertisement for Scratch. Queue the abstract: we have another three-part computational thinking framework, this time including computational concepts, computational practices, and computational perspectives (all three arguably relate to definitions and concepts previously discussed in class either in nature or by bridging concepts together).  

My thoughts changed. For me, an overview of what Brennan & Resnick saw as computational thinking concepts helped me clarify a few misconceptions I had about diSessa’s pillar of material and the “signs, symbols, depictions, or representations” included. While I originally saw it as a focus on specific symbolic languages, I now lean more towards the capabilities of languages: conditionals, operators, loops, even objects (if we are discussing object-oriented languages) thereby making the specific language used irrelevant – it is more about the understanding of when to use a loop and figuring out how the syntax of programming language you are using does just that. While Brennan and Resnick showed it through Scratch, I can see exact photos used for a variety of platforms. This also seemed to associate with the standards for computational thinking described by Grover and Pea.

It is also easy to compare diSessa’s second pillar (mental, cognition) to computational thinking practices. However, with the correlation and subsequent tools for assessing – I am still a supporter of the idea that a computer is not necessary for computational thinking, but perhaps it is necessary in the development of computational thinking skills. For instance, in our class discussions I recall this idea that we don't necessarily accomplish a real-life task by looping or modularizing in a way a computer would – and we definitely can’t do it as quickly as a computer can for large amounts of data. Moreover, I don’t see the infusion of computational thinking modules in the education system as a tool for creating a multitude of Spocks (yes, that is a Star Trek reference). However, I do think this method of thinking is of critical importance for students in real-life, no-computer-necessary situations. In the same way that I may reflect on what potential actions to take based on the emotional highway experienced through a Charlotte Bronte book in certain real-life situations (how do you truly care for a friend going through heartache?), I believe a confident skill level in computational thinking would naturally allow someone to reflect on a real life problem through conditionals, looping, debugging, etc.

Finally, in short, two big topics were introduced in our readings this week: assessment and teacher buy-in! The assessments described by Brennan and Resnick together create a great starting point and even related to ideas discussed by our class (primarily the portfolio concept). Each assessment seemingly allows for student empowerment – discussed in the beginning of the semester.

Wolz et al describe their work as “focusing on infusion, rather than injection.” In class we’ve discussed the possibility of creating enough buy-in to make computational thinking a core concept/subject and I believe their overall concept is an applicable start. They also discuss how their approach also allows for more equitable access: as a female computer science teacher and as a native of an island in which over 30% live under the poverty line and over 60% are on food stamps, this drew me in. While exact definitions of abilities that make a student a computational thinker may be slightly altered from the skillset described by Grover and Pea (and others) in order to fit this scenario (for instance, I would’ve liked to see a rubric for the Scratch presentation requirement – a student could simply copy code from other projects, but tweak the visuals), the overall context of training teachers to create buy in first is an applicable start.